Is it ever appropriate to flush the transmission fluid? I have received conflicting responses. My mechanic, who is very honest, recommends it at about 70,000 miles. Since he does not have the machine, he has no financial interest in recommmending it. The owners manual states only to flush it if the vehicle is used to tow. The dealer advised that since it is a sealed system (Volvo), it should not be done. However, the dealer said to flush at approx. 100,000 miles. I had always heard people say that the transmiision worked fine until they had it flushed. Then they encountered problems. I would like to keep the car many more years. Any remommendations? Thanks
my philosophy …if it aint broke don’t fix it…do the least invasive procedure…drain and clean filter works most of the time without any horror stories.
While there seems to be some logic behind the flush idea, I would not consider a service that did not drop the pan and clean/replace the filter. I doubt if a proper flush would be a bad thing, I suspect it is really designed to flush your wallet.
Any time I rebuild a transmission, I always recommend to my customers that they service their transmission every 25k miles. When I say service, I mean a pan drop and filter change. 100k miles is way too long between servicing. I would not flush unless the fluid is contaminated.
transman
When you say pan drop and filter change, how much fluid will actually be changed?
[b]Dropping the transmission pan only removes 30%-50% of the total amount of transmission fluid in the transmission. The rest is held inside the torque converter and valve body.
Tester[/b]
True, but the filter is where all the bad stuff should collect… Drop the pan, change the filter and look for problems…